


Where You Land

by sevenfists



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Originally Posted on LiveJournal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-08
Updated: 2006-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-24 10:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10739406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfists/pseuds/sevenfists
Summary: Sam: You know what? Maybe we shouldn't have left Stanford so soon.Dean: Sam we dug around there for a week, we came up with nothing.- from "Wendigo"





	Where You Land

Dean checked them into a Motel 6 that first night, early Monday morning, after he pulled Sam out of the burning apartment. Sam sat in one of the chairs in the lobby while Dean flirted with the girl behind the counter and passed her a fake credit card.

The room was like every other motel room Sam had ever stayed in. Dean got right in the shower. Sam went down the checklist in his head: he unplugged the phone, checked the doors and windows, unscrewed the grating over the vents to look inside. When that was done, he swept the room for bugs. Dean was still in the shower. Sam went into the bathroom anyway and ran his fingers along the bottom edge of the vanity's fake marble top.

Dean, glaring, poked his head around the shower curtain. "Sam, what the hell are you doing."

"I'm looking for bugs," Sam said.

Dean's face changed, a subtle shift that nobody but Sam would have noticed. "Christ," Dean said, and shut off the water. He stepped out of the tub, dripping wet, and wrapped his arms around Sam.

"It's okay, buddy," Dean said. "It's going to be okay."

***

The next morning, the first day after, Sam woke up at 7:30. Dean was snoring. Sam plugged the phone back in and took it into the bathroom to call Jess's parents.

Jess's dad sounded like he had been crying. "Please don't call us again," he said, and hung up.

Sam took a long shower and went back to bed. Dean tried to wake him up for breakfast, but Sam just rolled over and pulled the covers up over his ears.

***

On Tuesday, the second day, Sam woke to the sounds of Dean making coffee and humming Iron Maiden.

"Hi," Sam said.

Dean came over and sat on the edge of Sam's bed. "Let's go to breakfast," he said gently, and Sam said, "Okay."

Leave it to Dean to find the most country-fried mom-and-pop diner in any given city. Sam watched as his brother flirted outrageously with the waitress and ordered enough greasy food to give twelve grown men heart attacks. Sam got an omelet, even though he wasn't really hungry.

Dean polished off his bacon and half his sausage links before he looked up from his plate. He scowled at Sam and brandished his fork menacingly. "I swear to God, Sam, finish your motherfucking omelet or I will cram it down your throat and you will _like_ it."

"Is that a threat or a promise?" Sam speared little bits of pepper from the omelet filling and pushed them around his plate.

"Whichever you want it to be, baby," Dean said.

Sam had to smile a little at that. He took a bite of his omelet. Dean reached over the table to pat him on the cheek. "Fuck off," Sam said, and batted Dean's hand away, but he ate the rest of his omelet.

Their waitress brought the check. "I want to go look at the apartment," Sam said.

Dean rubbed his face. "Sam, there's nothing to see there. The fire department went all through the place, there's nothing."

"I don't care," Sam said. "I want to see it anyway."

Dean parked across the street from the apartment. It was still smoking a little. Sam ducked under the yellow police lines and went inside. The whole apartment was in bad shape, but the bedroom was a _disaster_. He picked through the wreckage, looking for anything salvageable. Pretty much everything was burned past recognition. He found what looked like the melted remains of the locket he'd given to Jess last Valentine's Day. He swallowed hard and slipped it into his pocket.

Dean came clomping inside then, and wandered around the apartment for a few minutes before coming to stand over Sam. "Dad didn't find anything either, you know. After Mom died."

Sam stood up and brushed his hands off on his jeans. "I'm not Dad, and Jess isn't Mom."

"But the same thing killed both of them," Dean said impatiently. "The fucker doesn't leaves any traces, you aren't going to find anything here."

"Maybe I have to try!" Sam yelled. "Maybe I want to spend some time in the home I shared with my dead girlfriend! If you hadn't dragged me off looking for Dad, none of this would have happened, Jess would still be alive!"

"I'll be in the car," Dean said. When he slammed the front door behind him, it fell off its warped hinges and crashed onto the floor.

Dean was staring out the driver's side window when Sam opened the car door and slid onto the seat. "Let's go to the police, see if they can tell us anything," Dean said, without turning his head to look at Sam.

"Okay," Sam said. He hesitated. "Look, Dean, what I said before - "

"Whatever. I know you're under a lot of stress right now. It's fine."

"No, it's not fine! What happened - it wasn't your fault. It would have happened anyway."

Dean just shrugged, but he started the car.

***

The third day was the funeral. Sam's good suit had met a tragic end in the fire, and Dean of course had nothing but jeans and flannel shirts. They took a trip to Goodwill. Dean bought a tie and a pair of black pants without any prodding from Sam.

It was a sunny day, warm, clear skies. The service was graveside. Jess's parents hadn't wanted anyone but family, and various great-aunts and cousins glared at Sam and Dean when they arrived, but nobody told them to leave. Sam brought flowers to lay on the coffin: lilacs, Jess's favorite.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I love you." The trees rustled overhead. Dean wrapped his hand around Sam's arm and guided him back to the car.

They didn't go to the reception afterward. Instead, Dean took Sam to a bar and bought him a bottle of tequila, and rubbed his back later while he turned his whole body inside out, vomiting into the toilet in the motel room.

"I might not make it," Sam said. His stomach muscles ached from puking so much.

Dean chuckled. "You'll live." His hand mapped out slow circles on Sam's back. He made Sam drink about two gallons of water and then put him to bed.

Sam woke up twice in the middle of the night: once to pee, and the second time because of a nightmare. There was fire, and Jess screaming, and then Dean's hand was on his forehead, stroking back his sweat-soaked hair.

"Shh, shh, Sammy, it's okay, you're just dreaming," Dean said. Sam sat up enough to bury his face in Dean's shoulder. He cried for a long time. Dean let him.

"You done now?" Dean asked quietly, when Sam had settled down some. "Ready to go back to sleep?"

"Don't leave," Sam said, still drunk, his hands wrapped in Dean's t-shirt.

Dean didn't answer, but he got under the covers with Sam and held him close. Sam felt like he was six years old again, terrified of the dark, desperate for something to hold on to. He fell asleep to the motion of Dean's chest rising and falling against his back.

***

Thursday, Sam woke up alone in bed. His head felt swollen and hot. It tasted like something had died in his mouth, been resurrected, and then died again, only more gruesomely. He staggered into the bathroom and threw up again, but he felt better after that.

"Mother _fucker_!" Dean yelled from the shower. "Did you just puke in the presence of my naked body?"

"You're the one who bought me the tequila," Sam said, and staggered toward the phone to call for room service. He didn't flush the toilet.

They spent the morning at the fire department, playing good cop/bad cop with the secretary until she relented and pulled up the file on her computer.

"Let's see," she said, squinting at the screen. "Says here it was an electrical fire. A lot of those older buildings have the original wiring, you know."

"Does it say anything else?" Sam asked. "Are they running an investigation or anything?"

"Well, no, dear," she said. "There's no evidence of foul play. It was just a tragic accident."

Sam opened his mouth to protest, but Dean kicked his ankle and shot him a look.

"Thanks for your time," Dean said, and winked at the secretary, gave her his patented aren't-I-charming smile. She blushed and giggled.

"You take care now, boys!" she called as they headed out the door.

Sam poked Dean in the side with his elbow. "Dean! I can't believe you put the moves on her! She was like, a hundred years old!"

"More experienced," Dean said, and grinned.

They went back to the apartment and skulked around there for a while, but they didn't find anything useful. Sam sat on the back steps and rested his forehead on his knees.

Dean wandered over after a while and sat down next to Sam. "Maybe we should think about heading on to Blackwater Ridge," he said.

Sam shook his head. "Not yet, Dean, okay? I'm not - I just can't leave yet."

"Well, we can't stay here forever, you know, Dad sent us those coordinates - "

"I _know_. Okay? Just a little while longer. Please."

Dean sighed. "All right." He slung an arm around Sam's shoulders. "C'mon, I'll buy you lunch."

***

Friday, Sam checked his Treo for the first time since the fire. There were about eight billion phone messages and emails waiting for him. Sam deleted all of them and called one of his friends, a guy named Teddy, and asked him to pass the word around: Sam was fine, he was with his brother, they were going on a road trip for a while.

"Hey, are you sure you're okay?" Teddy asked.

"I have to go," Sam said.

Dean took off in the Impala after breakfast. "I'm gonna check out the pawn shops, see if I can find anything useful," he told Sam. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

" _Is_ there anything you wouldn't do?" Sam asked.

Dean thought about it for a moment. "Golden showers. Not really my thing."

"Get out of here," Sam said, rolling his eyes.

Sam could tell that Dean was getting restless. He was inventing errands; he had spent hours cleaning all of his guns two nights in a row. Sam almost felt guilty about it; he knew they had to get going, but he just _couldn't_ yet. If he left California, he would be giving up, he would be admitting to himself that Jess was really dead.

But instead of bugging him constantly about getting on the road, Dean had been tiptoeing around him all week, patient, accommodating, in a way that Sam had seen before but not for years. He knew he would never be able to thank Dean for it: either Dean would brush it off, or Sam wouldn't be able to find the words.

***

Saturday, the sixth day, Sam went to the cemetery again. The fresh sod over Jess's grave was lushly green. He lay down on the grass, his body stretched full-length over hers. He dug his fingers into the soil.

Sam stayed there for a long time. Birds chirped in the trees; the wind moved through the grass; the sun moved slowly over Sam's back. He dozed for a while. When he woke up, it was late afternoon, and the shadow from Jess's headstone had lengthened enough to cover him completely.

Dean was playing Free Cell on the laptop when Sam got back to the motel. He looked up when Sam closed the door.

"How long do you think it'll take to get to Colorado?" Sam asked.

Dean didn't ask any questions. "No more than a day," he said. "We can leave tomorrow morning."

"Sounds good," Sam said.

***

On the seventh day, they left town, headed for Colorado. Sam felt like he was re-enacting Genesis, but in reverse: the destruction of the world instead of the creation of it. His whole life was gone. The next logical step: a vacation.

"And on the seventh day, He rested," Sam said out loud.

Dean pointed a finger at him. "Is that crazy-talk, Sam? I thought we discussed this. There will be no mental breakdowns in my car."

"The only crazy person in this car is _you_ ," Sam said, and Dean smirked and said, "You _wish_ you could be crazy like me."

The end of the world, but Dean was here, Dean still loved Sam even though he had left; Dean, at least, forgave him. As for Sam, he was still breathing, which had to count for something.

"You'll live," Dean had said, and for the first time, Sam thought that he actually might.  



End file.
